import memos from Palm

I tried to follow your instructions to import my "memos" from my Palm desktop (Mac version) to "Notebook". The only choices Palm gave me for export were Palm's own format and Tabe & Return. I tried both. The first would not import; the second imported the data, but when I saved it almost all of it disappeared. The Toodledo screen asked me to change the names of the columns before saving, so I change the first to Title and the rest to, I think, Notes, although there was very little rhyme or reason to what came through. After saving, almost all the data disappeared. Just the Titles of each entry remained, and a small amount of data on the second screen. Now I would like to know how to delete the 565 entries I have in my Toodledo Notebook without having to go through them one by one. And, of course, it would be nice to be told a better way of importing my Palm data. (I might add that I did succeed perfectly in importing my Tasks from my Palm desktop.) Thanks for any help you can give me.

Matt, I posted detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to import from Palm Desktop for Mac in the Tips & Tricks Forum in the post, "How to import Palm Desktop (Mac) memos/notes to the Notebook".

As far as getting rid of the notes you've already imported, go to your Account Settings, scroll all the way to the bottom of the window, and click on "Delete all Notebook entries."

And, one more thing: If the file you are importing to Toodledo.com doesn't look right in the last step before final import, just back out of it using the back button in your browser, and the file will not be imported.

Thank you very much, jebanks, for that post. It worked almost perfectly. (Someone should give you a prize for clear technical writing.) But for some reason, the third column – categories from Palm – was not available to choose at the top of the Todoodle import screen after I imported my post-Tex Wrangler copy. I could see the categories – "personal", "digital media", "misc" etc – on the screen, where they existed (I never categorized everything in Palm), but there was nothing at the top of the screen to adjust to "folder". The result is that I have all my 565 memos imported in my Toodledo Notebook, and all of the information is there in a very readable form. But all of the notes are in one gigantic folder (ie. no folder). I wonder if it is now possible for me to create folders in Toodledo in which to organize my notes.

Hm, I don't know why that dropdown choice for the 3rd column was missing. The Toodledo.com developers would be better able to answer that. When I imported my notes from Entourage, Toodledo.com created new folders based on what was in the CSV automatically, after I assigned that 3rd column to "Folder". (I imported my stuff in batches of several categories at a time.)

Yes, you can create folders in Toodledo. You would then have to individually click on "Edit Note" for each note and reassign it to a new folder. Just look very carefully around Toodledo.com and you'll see all of the functions you need to do all of that. There just isn't a way to mass-move your notes in Toodledo. If you don't want to edit 500+ notes, I would suggest backing up the steps you took to get your notes into Toodledo, and trying again (after nuking all of the notes you've already imported). That would be less time-consuming.

Also, here's a tip: when you click on a note to view its content, the lightbox will appear all the way at the top of the window. So if you're way down your list of 500, it may appear that clicking on a note did not open it. It did--you just have to scroll all the way to the top of the screen.

Oh wait--maybe this is the problem: because you didn't have categories for ALL of your notes, perhaps the Toodledo.com importer hiccuped and didn't create ANY folders. If that is the problem, the solution would be to go back to an earlier step--either the Excel file, or all the way back to Palm Desktop--and assign EVERY note to a category. I assume that in Palm Desktop, there is some way to mass-assign categories, but I wouldn't know for sure because I had always used Entourage to sync with my Palm, never Palm Desktop. When I imported from Entourage, all of my notes had categories assigned, and I didn't have any problems with folders being created. So, I'd nuke all of the notes and try again, making sure that all notes have categories.

Well, that did it. Excel helpfully put all the unassigned notes together at the top, so I just named the first one "unassigned" and then used the Fill command to mass-assign that category to them. When I came back to Toodledo to import my file, everything came nicely into its proper folder. I can't thank you enough: I was about to edit each of the 500+ files, one by one!